President Joseph Estrada, impeached by Congress for corruption, vowed Monday to prove his accusers wrong in an unprecedented trial in the Senate, but analysts said he has already been irreparably damaged.
The 63-year-old former movie star will remain in office during the trial in the Senate, which could decide to oust him with a two-thirds majority.
The House of Representatives in full sitting Monday voted to elevate to the Senate an impeachment motion against Estrada based largely on accusations by his former friend, provincial governor Luis Singson, that he took bribes from illegal gambling operators and kickbacks from tobacco excise taxes.
Estrada, the first president in Philippine history to be impeached, on Monday boldly dared members of the 218-seat House to impeach him.
He seemed confident that he controlled the numbers in the upper chamber, whose members will sit as jurors in the trial.
"I have told the lower house, especially my party mates, to speed up the process of impeachment and bring it up to the Senate so I can face the trial and end this whole thing," Estrada told a local radio station hours before he was impeached.
"My conscience is clear," he added.
Visiting the northern Ilocos region at the weekend, Estrada blasted his critics for questioning his allegedly excessive lifestyle which they claimed had compromised his integrity and dulled his sense of governance.
"I will prove wrong those who have put their personal and political interests above the interests of our country by demanding my ouster and fomenting political and economic stability," he said, vowing to remain in office until his six-year term ends in 2004.
At least 15 votes, or two-thirds of the 22-member Senate, are needed to boot Estrada out.
There are currently eight opposition members expected to vote against the president, although four others who recently bolted from the ruling coalition may go either way, analysts said.
They stressed however that the impeachment trial is in itself already an end-game for Estrada, who won the presidency in 1998 with the biggest margin in Philippine history by courting support of his massive movie-fan base.
The tide has however turned against the former matinee idol in recent weeks, with anti-Estrada rallies having become an almost daily occurrence in Manila.
Estrada's repeated claims of innocence have also been drowned in the din of calls for his ouster led by the influential Roman Catholic church and opposition figures led by Vice President Gloria Arroyo and former presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos.
Estrada, the country's 13th president, effectively became a "lame duck" president when the lower house brought the charges to the Senate, said Malaya Ronas, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines.
He said even if Estrada emerged victorious, he would be hard put to consolidate support.
"It will be difficult for him to govern, because the legislative leaders in Congress obviously believed the accusations of Singson which are very serious allegations," Ronas told AFP.
The business community has also given its verdict "and as far as they are concerned, he has already lost credibility."
"We have already lost the confidence of the domestic and foreign investors even before the trial began, and putting us in a deeper rut," Ronas said.
He called on Estrada to bow out gracefully should he be proven guilty, although he warned of more problems to come if he is cleared by the Senate.
"If he is not found guilty then we will have a crisis for the remainder of his term. If you have capital flight now, the next thing that would happen is unemployment and this could be massive. And if people are unemployed civil unrest is not very unlikely," Ronas warned -- MANILA (AFP)
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